


Smart Wool

by gwevyan



Series: Steve Rogers Week [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky is hard on socks, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers Week, no civil war, the Winter Soldier just wants warm toes is that too much to ask?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-07
Updated: 2016-07-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 01:57:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7414300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwevyan/pseuds/gwevyan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once again inspired by yesterday's:<br/>They'd tracked the Winter Soldier down- a docks warehouse in New York City, distressed and panicky and clearly not wanting to go too far away, either from Steve or his last contact with his handlers.  But how are they supposed to subdue him?  Steve has a plan to lure Bucky in.<br/>It's socks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smart Wool

“It’s not gonna work.”

“It’s going to work.”

“It’s not gonna work.”

“It’s going to work,” Steve insisted stubbornly, and snipped the plastic tag off another pair.

“Socks.”

“Yes, socks.  Now throw me that pack sitting next to you,” Steve ordered.

“ _Socks_ ,” Clint enunciated slowly.  He twisted back around to face the front and slouched down into his seat at one end of the sofa, stretching one leg out to poke Sam’s knees with his toes.  The Falcon flicked a page of his magazine and continued to ignore them both.  “Sam.  Sam, you know all about this stuff.  Do you think the world’s most traumatized, brain damaged, ultra-dangerous super-soldier assasin is gonna overcome his neurological programming and defect to the good guys because we give him a bag of socks?”

Sam sighed gusty enough to rustle his magazine, and set it aside.  He spoke to Clint but he raised his voice very pointedly to be heard on the other side of the room.  “Personally?  I think Steve’s cracked up and this is all just a big waste of a ridiculous amount of money and a whole lot of nice socks.”

“A ridiculous amount of _my_ money, though, and when you have as much of the stuff as I do it can never be a waste,” Tony announced, striding in- and adding proof to Steve’s private belief that Tony liked to lurk in elevators and hallways, spying via JARVIS, waiting for the perfect cue to a dramatic entrance.  “How’s it shakin’, bacon?”

“I really like these new wool socks,” Steve told him, holding up a pair for reference.  “They say they’re all-wool but they don’t itch at all.  When we were kids, me and Bucky had to wear wool socks and long johns all winter long, and spent three months at a time trying not to scratch our skin raw from the itching.”

“Yeah, well,” Tony said breezily, rifling through the bags Steve’s sorting out.  “That was the biggest reason for genetically modified sheep.  The patented ‘Itch-Ewe-No-More’ was a big breakthrough way back when."

Steve frowned.  Now that he’d mostly got over being surprised by the brave new world of the future, Tony liked to make things up to throw him off.

He’d completely pulled the wool over Steve’s eyes with the whole ‘all coffee makers are now voice controlled’ thing, and Steve was still deeply embarrassed about it- even if that SHIELD agent was sworn/threatened to eternal silence.

To be on the safe side, he asked Sam, “Is that true?”

“Naw.  It’s smoother because of using specific kinds of wool and having a different processing system than people used to use.”

Tony stuck his tongue out at them both.

“You think I’ve got enough?” Steve asked, hefting the three department store bags full of socks over his shoulders.  He’d been thorough in his shopping spree: thick soft wool socks, hefty boot socks (the kind just about everybody would have killed for back in the war, he thought ruefully), well-ventilated athletic socks.  A few pairs of regular, unpadded socks that weren’t so practical but had little pictures of hearts or hot dogs on them.

“I think you’ve lost your marbles,” Tony said cheerfully.  “But I also don’t think even our Soviet Man of Mystery can feasably carry around more than forty pairs of socks, so I’d say you’re good.”

“I hope so,” Steve sighed.  “Well, wish me luck.”

***

The Soldier hesitated at the entrance to the building he’d been using as a hideout since the Helicarrier crashed and his comms went silent.

Someone had been inside.

His metal hand gripped the fire door hard enough to crumple the metal.  Was it his handlers, finally come to take him back?

Did he want to go back?

The Soldier wasn’t supposed to _want_.

He didn’t want to go back to the chair and the cold.

He wasn’t supposed to _want_!

He threw the door open.

The inside was clear- he could tell in an instant.  No persons within the building except himself.  But…there was something small, there, on the floor in the middle of the open space between old ranks of shelving and crates.  It didn’t look like any kind of explosive or electronic device, so the Soldier crept up.

It was a pair of grey socks.

The Soldier picked them up.  They were thicker than any he remembered having, and softer.  They felt like they’d be warm.

He hadn’t been _warm_ in _so long_.

The Soldier sat on the floor and untied his boots.  He wasn’t issued new clothes unless they were visibly damaged beyond repair, and his socks were rarely visible to anybody, so he didn’t remember ever wearing a pair that didn’t have holes in the heels and toes.  He pulled on the new thick socks.  His toes _curled_.  He felt _warm_.

He _wanted._

The Soldier put his boots back on and stuffed his old socks in a pocket to burn later.  He wasn’t supposed to want, but he wanted more of these.  But where had they come from?  He set up a slow search of the building, hunting out any clues of who had broken in just to leave a pair of socks in the middle of the floor.

There, by the other door, the one that lead out to the other side of the block.  Another pair of socks, these with light and dark brown stripes, lay neatly folded, balanced on the door handles.  He picked them up.  These weren’t as thick as the grey ones on his feet- his toes curled again, involuntarily- but they were even softer.  He opened the door, cautious as ever despite the spinning in his mind.  Nobody ever walked through this vacant part of the docks, but clearly somebody was out there today.

A bright blue pair of socks sat in the middle of the road, resting on a clean piece of cardboard to keep them off the dirty ground.  Aside from the color, they looked like the ones he saw agents wearing in the gym when he was sent in for physical fitness tests.  Thick on the bottom with thinner patches on top.  The Soldier darted out into the road and snatched them up.

Another pair of grey socks, just like the ones he was wearing, lay on top of a fire hydrant a little further on.

***

“I don’t believe this,” Tony muttered, staring raptly at the video streaming to his StarkPad from the tiny, fly-like drone hovering over Steve’s head.

“Hey, don’t knock it,” Clint said, tossing a gummy bear high enough to bounce off the ceiling before catching it in his mouth.  “I know I was making fun earlier, but there were times back in the circus when I would’a done just about anything for a brand new pair of shoes.”

“Naw, it’s something more than just that,” Sam argued, having completely given up pretending to read his magazine and now observing intently over Tony’s shoulder.  They watched Steve, carefully staying no more or less than a few hundred yards ahead of Barnes, place another pair of socks in the trail leading slowly away from the warehouse hideout and out to a part of the docks Steve was conviced Bucky would recognize, having spent a few years working there as a teenager.  Some historical society had bought one of the buildings Bucky had worked in and turned it into a museum.  It was closed on Mondays, so they’d be the only ones there once Steve lured Barnes inside.  Tony, with his little drone, was ready to remotely take care of any security cameras they might pass on the way.

“Socks,” Tony said in disbelief.  “JARVIS, what the hell is missing from my wardrobe?”

“ _One might suggest_ taste _, sir.”_

“Community college, JARVIS, I swear.  Ooh, camera.  Lemme at it.”

***

Steve set the last pair of socks- a forest green pair of that wonderful new wool- down in the middle of the museum floor.  It was one big room off a small lobby, lined with displays of inventory books, tools used in old boat yards, and old photos blown way up.  Steve wondered if Bucky were in any of those pictures.

A floorboard creaked.  Steve sat down on the floor, hands open and resting on his knees, and waited.

Bucky moved silently, slowly, into the room.  His eyes zeroed in on Steve, then flicked to the socks on the ground.

His arms were absolutely full of socks.

“Go ahead,” Steve said softly.  “Look, there are some plastic bags behind you in the lobby.  You can grab a few and put all your socks in there.”

Bucky looked down at his pile of socks, then eyed Steve warily.  He hugged the armload to his chest.

“Okay,” Steve chuckled.  “I promise I won’t take them, but do you want me to go get the bags for you?”

Bucky didn’t say anything, but started to edge carefully around the room.  Steve clambered to his feet and moved opposite him until he could duck into the lobby and come back with a handful of bags from the gift shop stand.

“Here you go,” he said encouragingly, and slid the bags across the floor.  Bucky inspected the bags briefly before dumping the socks in his arms into four of them, adding pairs of socks he pulled from every pocket in his uniform.  Last, he quickly snatched up the green socks still waiting on the floor, and picked all the bags up into his arms.

Steve sat back down on the floor.  He was between Bucky and the only door now, just as he’d hoped.  He pulled a small pouch out of his back pocket.

“Hey, Bucky,” he said, sounding every bit as casual as if they were sitting out on the fire escape of their old apartment, shooting the breeze.  “You remember how excited you always used to get on holidays because you knew you’d get some new socks?”

Bucky screwed up his face when Steve said his name, but didn’t otherwise move.  Steve unzipped his pouch.

“You were always the hardest on socks of any of us kids, with your big chicken feet and spending all your time running around with me.  Always wore through the heels in just a few months.  Hey, remember how we finally got to meet back up in the Army and I had to patch up all your clothes?”

Steve pulled out some spools of black thread and a packet of darning needles.  He gestured to Bucky’s feet.  “I bet your old socks are in some pretty bad shape by now.  You wanna give ‘em here for a minute so I can fix ‘em up?”

Bucky hesitated.  He looked hard at Steve for a minute, a tiny flicker of something a little desperate in his eyes.  Then he slowly pulled a pair of ratty, black socks out of his pocket, and tossed them over.

“Knew it,” Steve grinned.  And he set to work.

He talked while he darned.  All about comic books they read, movies they saw, people they went to school with, helping each other cheat on tests.  Favorite treats, most embarrassing moments.  Fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Bucky’s eyes drooped a little, but he seemed riveted between the sound of Steve’s voice and the sight of him sewing, so Steve kept going.

“And then my mom, you know- because she was a nurse- she made you sit down with her in the kitchen so she could tell you all about the birds and the bees, and your were redder than Becca’s red patent leather shoes- and you tried to tell her you’d made the whole thing up just to impress me, but she wouldn’t believe you, said you were just making excuses and if you wanted to act like a man you needed to know all the consequences, and-“  Steve was laughing so hard he could barely spit out the words.  “She kept you in there with the door closed for a _whole hour_ , and you never told me what all she said.  I asked you so many times, but you always just said that you cared about me too much to tell.”

Steve shook his head, grinning at the memory of a young Bucky before his charm set in, and stretched the second sock in his hands to check his work.  “I think that’s as good as it’s going to get.  Not that you really need these anymore, huh?”

Bucky had edged forward so slowly that Steve had hardly noticed him doing it, but when he reached out, he was able to take the socks out of Steve’s hand.  “You…fixed the holes in my socks,” he said, haltingly.  “Before.  I remember…in the dark.”

“Yeah,” Steve said softly, careful not to lean forward the way he wanted to.  “I always fixed your socks, Buck.  Whenever it was my turn to get to help you out, I’d go pull you out of a scrap, and bring you home, and fix your socks.”

Bucky bit his lip, and his eyes went bright.  “I _want_ ,” he confessed, but it didn’t sound like he could finish the sentence.

“That’s good," Steve told him.  "That’s because you’re you, James Bucky Barnes, and you’re not something somebody built like a robot.  Do you want me to bring you home?” Steve asked.  “I’ll help you out.  You’ll be safe, nobody will ever hurt you again.  It’ll just be you and me and all the clean socks you want.”

Bucky considered his bags of socks for a moment.  Then he looked back up at Steve, and nodded.  “…Okay.”

Steve’s relief rocketed so high he couldn’t help laughing.  All these months…and here they were.  He was coming home.

Above their heads, Tony’s little drone swooped somersaults of glee.

 


End file.
